120 Ray Scott Percival
The pairs “Understanding and Exploration” and “Immediate and
Inferred” are supposed to represent classes of information. The first cov-
ers the human need for understanding and exploration; the second con-
cerns how much time it takes to process the information from the scene.
Kaplan’s general point is that safe and useful movement through a
landscape requires a great deal of skill and knowledge, and that land-
scapes that aid exploration, way-finding, and information processing
would be preferred over those that impede these needs. Preferred land-
scapes contain moderate degrees of complexity, coherence, and semi-
open spatial arrangement. Preferred landscapes also contained a degree
of what Kaplans calls “mystery”—indications that more interesting
information could be obtained with further exploration (such as roads or
paths that bend round hills, entering woods, partially blocked views).
Preferred landscapes also contain high levels of “legibility”, indications
that one could easily maintain one’s orientation and find one’s way both
into and out of the scene, extending one’s cognitive map of the environ-
ment (it looks like one could learn it). Looking into murky environments
in deep sea diving or in a fog or dense forest is relatively unpleasant, and
the avoidance of such environments has had evolutionary advantages.
I want to suggest that if there are cross-art genetic classical stan-
dards, Kaplan’s work is most likely the best way of teasing them out into
the open. Kaplan’s work is a way to delineate the formal qualities
stressed by classicism. The highly predictive variables of coherence and
complexity seem to have an affinity with the formal qualities of har-
mony, clarity, and restraint. Legibility and mystery may be ways in
which other more meaningful (and conjectural) qualities of a scene can
be used to extend and refine our conception of native standards, not only
for the visual arts but for all the arts. Mystery is perhaps a post-classi-
cal discovery about our native aesthetic.
One can see how to apply these criteria to contrast classical and
avant-garde art. Classical art appears to have significant amounts of
these qualities; avant-garde art often does not. At the cost of some clar-
ity, impressionism seems to have gained a degree of mystery, complex-
ity and legibility; abstract visual art seems to have very little mystery
(partly because of the obsession with the flatness of the medium),
though it seems to have retained some coherence. The best examples
would be from minimalist artists such as Kasimir Malevich (“Black
Square on a White Ground”) and later artists such as Ad Reinhart
(“Black Painting,” 1973, which consists of a very dark grey cross on a
black ground) and Barnett Newman (“Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and
Blue III,” 1966–67, which consists of a large rectangular expanse of